The Gilroy Garlic Festival is a food festival in the United States, held annually in Gilroy, California, on the last full weekend in July at Christmas Hill Park.
The most recent festival was held on 26–28 July 2019. Since there will be no event in 2020, the 42nd is deferred to 2021.
An annual three-day event, the Gilroy Garlic Festival is one of the country’s best known food festivals, drawing visitors from across the nation. Located about 30 miles (48 km) southeast of San Jose, Gilroy is home to about 60,000 people, and the city is a major producer of garlic.
The festival is Gilroy’s top fundraiser, staffed with volunteers to raise money for nonprofit groups including clubs and schools. The Garlic Festival has been held every year since 1979, except this year when it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rudolph J. Malone, then President of Gavilan College in Gilroy, was inspired by a small town in France which hosted an annual garlic festival and claimed to be the “Garlic Capital of the World.” Malone started the festival, which now draws more than hundreds of thousands of paying visitors a year.
Besides the plethora of garlicky foods, the festival has the Miss Gilroy Garlic Festival Queen Pageant competition as well as over 100 carefully curated arts and crafts merchants. Included in the price of admission is also family-friendly live music performed on three stages, ranging from jazz to rock to reggae to country.
Kids will stay entertained at the Children’s Area, which includes kid-friendly food options, vendors, rides, and games, and the weekend is full of various garlic-themed cooking competitions, including one just for little ones. See a snippet of what the event entails below.
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